by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

This tutorial shows you how to make or create a website. It is intended for the beginner and layperson, taking you step by step through the whole process from the very beginning. It makes very few assumptions about what you know (other than the fact that you know how to surf the Internet, since you’re already reading this article on the Internet). Since some steps are more involved, it also links to selected relevant articles on thesitewizard.com that you will need to click through to read for more information.

The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Own Website

1. Get Your Domain Name

   The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. A domain name is the name you want to give to your website. For example, the domain name of the website you’re reading is “thesitewizard.com”. To get a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Getting a name does not get you a website or anything like that. It’s just a name. It’s sort of like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world; having that business name does not mean that you also have the shop premises to go with the name.

2. Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account

   A web host is basically a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. When you place your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them. You will need to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home. If getting a domain name is analogous to getting a business name in the brick-and-mortar world, getting a web hosting account is analogous to renting office premises for your business.

3. Designing your Web Pages

   Once you have settled your domain name and web host, the next step is to design the web site itself. In this article, I will assume that you will be doing this yourself. If you are hiring a web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step, since that person will handle this step.

4. Testing Your Website

   Although I list this step separately, this should be done throughout your web design cycle. I list it separately to give it a little more prominence, since too few new webmasters actually perform this step adequately.

   You will need to test your web pages as you design them in the major browsers: Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 6, the latest versions of Firefox, Opera and Safari. Since all these browsers are free anyway, it should not be any hardship to get them and install them. The trick however, is testing with more than one version of Internet Explorer since the later version

5. Getting Your Site Noticed

   When your site is ready, you will need to submit your site to the search engines, particularly Google. You can find the Google submission page by clicking on the “About Google” link on Google, and then locating the “Submit your content to Google” link on the page that appears. However, submitting your site to Google alone is, quite frankly, a pointless endeavour. If there are no other links to your site on the web, Google will be appear most reluctant to index your site and show results that include your pages. If there are many other links to your site, you don’t even have to bother to submit it to Google – it will find your site by itself.

Free domain forever when hosting with #1 hosting

hostmonster.com

Web Hosting Space Unlimited Host UNLIMITED DOMAINS Free Domain Name Domain Privacy Free Drag and Drop Site Builder Support International Domain Names POP3/POP3 Secure Email Support Unlimited IMAP/Secure IMAP Email Support Unlimited Gigs of Site Transfer Unlimited Forwarding Email Accounts Unlimited Email Autoresponder Unlimited Add-on Domains Unlimited Parked Domains Unlimited Subdomains Unlimited Additional FTP Accounts Unlimited MySQL Databases 100 PostgreSQL Databases 100 IMAP/secure IMAP Email Support 3 Different Web Based Email Solutions CGI-BIN CGI Library Server Side Includes Frontpage 2000/2002 Extensions Account “Control Panel” FTP Access Shell Access (SSH) Override .htaccess Support Anonymous FTP Webmail (Browser Based Email) Log Files + Site Stats Customizable Error Pages Web File Manager Custom Cronjobs Spam Assassin Protection Quad Processor Performance Servers Linux Operating System Customized Apache Web Server UPS Power Back-up/ Back-up Generator 24/7 Monitoring Courtesy Site Backups OC-48 Backbone Connection

Bulletin Board (Message Forum) Form-mail Script Social Networking Web Blogs/Wordpress/b2evolution Mailing Lists Image Galleries/Coppermine Poll and Survey Software Moodle Drupal and Joomla Project Management PHP 5 Perl 5 Python Ruby/Ruby On Rails Support For Custom PHP.INI Files Javascript/DHTML Flash/Shockwave Help Center/Support Ticket SSL Secure Server OS Commerce Shopping Cart Agora Shopping Cart Free Generated Certificate Password Protected Directories Open PGP/GPG Encryption Supports Streaming Video Supports Streaming Audio Real Audio & Video Support Flash Support Macromedia Shockwave MIDI File Support Add own MIME Types Search Engine Submission FREE $50 Google Credits!!! FREE

“Free website hosting plans” are a type of web hosting service where you get free web space on their hosting server to create and host your web site free. Free web page hosting has several advantages, but mainly that it costs nothing (no money and no credit cards needed). Free web site hosting services also often have several disadvantages (though a few actually surpass some of the cheapest paid hosting servers in some features), such as limited webhosting features and forced ads. Usually in exchange for these free hosting services, the free web hosting company places advertisements on your free web pages of some sort (banners, textlinks, popups, etc.) to cover their costs, and hopefully make a profit. However there are some free website hosts that provide free bannerless hosting (no ads, no popups, and no advert of any kind), so they make money in other ways, such as displaying ads for the webmaster to click in their control panel, sending email ads, or requiring forum posting (which of course displays ads, as well as causing you to create free website content for them). Other free web page hosts offer very limited services (such as limited web page space, bandwidth limit, and no scripting) to attract users and hope that many people upgrade to a paid webhosting service. Many free website hosts provide a subdomain or sub-directory of their own domainname instead of (or an option to) allowing its users to host their own top-level domain name free. Most of the free webpage hosting providers over the years have proven to often not be reliable servers, but most of the free hosts listed on this web site have been in service several years, so are more reliable than most newer free hosts.

aka Cheap web hosting

The purpose of this article is to describe how to host a web site on your own MS Windows computer.    Leveraging your own hardware is a cheap way to set up a web site particularly when using off the shelf, free software available on the internet.

It is not particularly difficult to set up a web host once you know what software to use and how to configure it.   However, it is not always easy to know where to start when you haven’t done it before.

I am assuming that you have some form of permanently connected broadband access and that your broadband router/modem is able to pass through traffic on port 80 (the default web server port).  I am also assuming that you have a registered domain name that points to your IP address and have generated some basic web content for your website.

This website is hosted on an old laptop of mine, now considered reasonably under powered.   It is a Pentium III, 933 MHz, with 256MB RAM, and 20 GB HD.    This computer gives perfectly acceptable performance for web hosting and for running additional services such as databases and scripting languages.

Choosing the Operating System for your web host

There are many other websites that describe how to set up a web host on Linux, however very few describe how to set up on Windows.

I would recommend using Windows XP Pro, Windows 2k or Windows NT.   I would not recommend Windows 9x, ME or XP Home.   These tend to be less robust and their security features are limited.

Whatever OS you choose to use, always ensure that you have the latest Service Packs from Microsoft.

Please note:  on newer versions of WinXP a firewall is included.   Please ensure that this has port 80 opened to allow it to talk to your web server.

I would also recommend that you have a virus checker (eg: Symantec/Norton Antivirus – purchase from www.symantec.com ) with automatic updates on and an anti spyware program (eg: Windows Defender, formally known as AntiSpyware – download from www.microsoft.com ) with automatic updates on.

A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way to access your website. The computer that the web hosting company uses is typically just like the computer you have at home, the only difference being that it is set up to serve up web sites and is therefore called a “server”.

A web host will typically have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.

Some large web hosts own their own datacenter (collection of servers), some rent a server from a larger web hosting company and then resell the space under their own company name. In this case the web host will manage your account on the server, but they will be renting the actual web space from another much larger company.

This is a picture of a datacenter.
Which contains many PC’s all connected to the Internet It is very expensive to own and operate a datacenter. Datacenters have reliable and fast connections to the Internet and also have backup power and high security. Most web hosting companies do not own a datacenter, but rent web hosting space in a datacenter.

When you buy web hosting it can be easier to let the web host handle everything associated with this. You just tell them the name that you want (www.yoursite.com for example) and so long as that name is available, they will set up your web hosting space so that when people type in that www address, it will automatically go to your website. You can check if a domain name is available on our Domain Registration page.

If you already have a domain name and need to transfer it to a web hosting account, then the domain records have to be pointed to your web hosting company. Most web hosts will handle this for you, but if you need to do it yourself then you will need to contact the company where you registered your domain name and provide the Nameserver address of your web hosting provider. Your web host will tell you what their Nameservers address is.

You probably don’t want to buy your web hosting plan until your website is ready, but you might want to buy your website name early to prevent somebody else taking the name you want. Almost all companies that sell domain names will park your domain on their servers until you are ready to buy web hosting.

Different Kinds Of Web Hosting
There are different kinds of web hosting setups and dependent upon your website and budget, any of these may be the right type. This is not a discussion of the features a web hosting plan may offer – just a description general types of web hosting

1. Free Web Hosting
It is possible to get free web hosting accounts. These are great for small websites, but normally you have to have a banner ad at the top of every page. Some free accounts let you use your domain name (free virtual hosting) and with some your website address is a subdomain of the free hosting company (www.yoursitename.freehosting.com). This second type is called Free Sub-domain hosting.

Hosting for small websites can be very cheap, but If you can answer yes to all of the following questions, then free web hosting may be right for you.

• I don’t care about having ads at the top of every page in my website
• I don’t care about the performance / reliability of the website
• I don’t expect any customer support
• My website is very small and will never grow

2. Shared Hosting
This is the most common type of web hosting account and can be very low cost. With paid shared (virtual) hosting you pay a monthly fee and get a share on a server. For very low cost plans you may only have a small amount of disk space and a low amount of bandwidth (although this will probably not be a problem for the vast majority of websites). With cheap virtual hosting plans you maybe one site amongst hundreds on the same server – in this case reliability may suffer. For slightly more expensive plans you will probably find better reliability.

3. Dedicated Hosting
With dedicated hosting you have a full server dedicated to your website. This gives you a lot more freedom and you can host potentially hundreds of your own websites. Typically you will have access to the server just like you have access to your PC at home. Dedicated servers are normally reserved for large ecommerce type websites, sites that get a lot of visitors (thousands a day), or for people that want to start their own hosting company and sell shared hosting accounts. A dedicated server is more reliable, but also much more expensive being at least $100 a month vs $1 – $20 range of a shared hosting plan.

4. Colocated Hosting
This is very similar to dedicated hosting, except that you own the server rather than rent it. Your server is placed in the datacenter and connected to the Internet through the web hosting providers fast Internet connection. You will then pay a fee for maintenance and bandwidth.

So What Web Hosting Plan Is The Right One To Buy?
You have a lot of choices in the web hosting market and it can be very confusing to find the best deal that meets your needs.

The 1st step before you start to look for a web hosting company is to determine what your needs are. It can be very tempting to look for plans that offer everything. There are many such deals available, even at a low price, but you will be storing up trouble for yourself. Take a step back and determine exactly what you need and then use WebHosting Top10.com to find a plan that matches at the right price from a web hosting company that you are comfortable with.

---

Step1 – Determining Your Needs

1. DiskSpace
Web pages (html) are normally very small – on average 40 – 50KB. This means you can store a lot of web pages in a small amount of diskspace. Images take up more space, but unless you have a big database driven site – it is unlikely that you will need very much disk space. Below is terminology used to describe disk space. If you have a computer at home or the office, then you will be already very familiar with this.

Disk Storage Space Terminology
1 Byte	1 character. This sentence is 25 bytes
1 KB	1000 Bytes
1 MB	1000 KB
1 GB	1000 MB

2. Bandwidth
Bandwidth is always stated as a monthly limit in either MB or GB. This is the amount of actual data that can be transferred from the web server that holds your website, to the browser of the person who is looking at your website. If you go over the limit, then either you will have to be an extra fee, or your website will not be available. The amount of bandwidth you use is obviously related to the amount of traffic (visitors) that you receive.

There are web hosting companies that offer Unlimited bandwidth. This sounds like a good deal. The truth is that this is nothing but a lie and you should steer clear of web hosting companies that offer unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a commodity that costs the web hosting company money – unlimited bandwidth is not only impossible, but would cost an unlimited amount of money. When web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth they are trying to trick you. They know that you will probably not use very much bandwidth. The moment you try to use a lot of bandwidth – then you will find your website shutdown.

For most web sites you will not need much bandwidth. Probably 99% of all websites use less than 2 GB of bandwidth a month. If you intend to have a lot of downloads of software, audio or video, then you may end up using a lot more bandwidth, maybe 50 GB. Adult sites typically use a lot of bandwidth. Sites like mp3.com require an enormous amount of bandwidth, but for the average site – a low level will be enough in almost all cases.

The calculator below will help you determine what amount of bandwidth you might need. This assumes a simple web site with no audio or video downloads. Remember 1GB = 1000 MB (eg 0.75 GB = 750 MB)

3. Email Accounts
How many email accounts will you need? Normally 10 is enough, but if you think you might want more then you can use

4. Support
You need to ask yourself questions like do you want phone support, or will email support be ok? Do you want support 24 hours a day? If you have a small website that is not critical (i.e you don’t pay your mortgage with website earnings) then you probably don’t need phone support or 24/7 support. It costs web hosting companies to provide this type of support, don’t pay more for a plan that offers this if you don’t need it.

5. Server Type
If you have a small website, then it is unlikely that you will need to select a particular type of server for your website. Windows 2000 server web hosting tends to be a little bit more expensive than Linux. If you need to run a Microsoft SQL server database, or use Microsoft Active Server pages then you should choose Windows2000. If you have no clue what these things even are – then you don’t need Windows2000 – you will almost certainly be fine with any type of server.

6. Other Features like Databases, Server Side Scripting
Web hosting plans can offer a myriad of confusing features. For the small website it is unlikely that you will ever need to know about any of them. If you are a web designer creating complex database driven sites then you will already know what you need. If after creating your site you have never heard of ASP, ColdFusion, SQL Server, mySQL – then chances are that you don’t need to worry about any of these things. If you plan to add a message board to your website then you will need a mySQL database. This is the most common database used with discussion boards.

---

Step2 – Finding The Right Web Hosting Plan To Buy
Finding the right web hosting plan is the purpose of WebHosting Top10.com – so you are at the right place. You can enter your needs into the easy or advanced search tools, or you can use one of the preset searches then refine your search.

There are many web hosting directories on the web. They all claim to be great resources. For the most part they are great resources…for the web hosting companies, but not for you, the web hosting consumer. Almost all of these web hosting directories are a place where web hosting companies advertise and they are in business only to generate advertising income from hosting companies. For the consumer they are worthless because you can not find any unbiased information. These advertising based web hosting directories have list of recommendations, top 25 lists, platinum lists etc…they are all just advertising lists similar to the ads in junk mail that might arrive through your mail slot. Avoid these sites, they have no value because you cannot trust any information you will find in them.

WebHosting Top10 has no advertising and no hosting company can buy an unfair advantage. When you do a search we return a list of web hosting plans that all match your search criteria that you can then evaluate. Read ratings from other customers, check real-time reliability numbers, look at other sites they host, check out their website and compare plans side by side with other plans.
Please feel welcome to have a look at our list with selected web hosting plans.

]]>